Caught in the (One-)Act: Staging Sex in Late Medieval French Farce
Caught in the (One-)Act: Staging Sex in Late Medieval French Farce Sharon D. King Paper given at the 14th Triennial Colloquium of the…
Taking (and Giving) Blows: Patterns of Violence and Spectacle in Le Mystère de Saint Martin (1496)
What I would like to do here is examine the passages of violence and other bits of scenography, moving from the macro to the micro level and back again, over the three- day play. With 260 rubrics (stage directions) embodied in the text, a manuscript nearly contemporaneous with the performance itself, we have a unique opportunity to visualize much of the action on stage.
Corpus Christi Plays and the Stations of the Cross: Medieval York and Modern Sydney
The earliest surviving reference to the Corpus Christi festival in York is dated 1322, when Archbishop William Melton commended it as „the glorious feast of the most precious sacrament of the flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ‟. In 1408 the York Guild of Corpus Christi was established „as a confraternity of chaplains and lay persons, with the encouragement of the city government, probably to form the focus of the civic Corpus Christi Day procession‟.
The Virgin Mary in High Medieval England, A Divinely Malleable Woman: Virgin, Intercessor, Protector, Mother, Role Model
This thesis examines the significance of the Virgin Mary in England between the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century. The primary sources selected indicate the variety of ideas circulating about her during this period. Strictly religious texts such as the Bible and early Christian writings ground Late Medieval beliefs about Mary in their historical context.
The Music of the Medieval Body in Pain
In the fifteenth-century Passion d’Auvergne, the rounding up of martyrs for persecution inspires torturer Maulbec to teach his cronies the words of a hunting song which imitates the cries of wounded animals.
The Body of Christ: Sacred Street Theater in Medieval England
As many as forty-six plays, amounting to more than thirteen thousand lines of verse, may have preceded the performance of the Doomsday play. Together they hit most of the highlights of the Christian canon and apocrypha.
The Elder Edda Revisited: Past and Present Performances of the Icelandic Eddic Poems
What first struck me when I started my research on the Elder Edda is that, during the past four decades, several theatre practitioners have experimented with presentations of some of the poems and demonstrated that they can be highly effective in dramatic performance.
Dancing Devils and Singing Angels: Dance Scenes in German Religious Plays
The early Church had a mostly critical attitude towards the dance. It was said that those who dance cherish heathen godheads and that they allow their bodies rule over their minds. Repeatedly, the synods prohibited religious dances and/or dances within churches.
English Mystery Plays – Staging Patterns and Orality Features
Medieval English theatre is a term covering a large body of plays, performances and theatrical activities. The entire period of medieval drama spans for five hundred years.
Shakespeare’s Richard II: Machiavelli for the Good of England
The name Machiavelli has negative connotations, and this way of thinking is not new. Throughout Europe, in Shakespeare’s time and earlier, Machiavellianism was associated with unscrupulous abuse of power, and Machiavellian methods were seen as immoral and evil.
The Sad Death of a King: The Legacy of Richard the Second
This thesis will examine the manner in which Shakespeare drew upon existing sources material to depict a king whose inherent character flaws made him unworthy of his crown.
Poculi Ludique Societas shows how to perform a Christmas play, medieval style
A Medieval Christmas: Go We hence to Bethlehem’s Bower – playing this weekend in Toronto
A Single Leaf: Tolkien’s Visual Art and Fantasy
With such a model in mind, then, we have entered into a discussion of art, myth‐making, and the Primary World from a combined academic and artistic perspective.
Medieval Snuff Drama
Did an onstage execution really take place in 1549 in the city of Tournai or not?
The Talking Brass Head as a Symbol of Dangerous Knowledge in Friar Bacon and in Alphonsus, King of Aragon
The talking brass heads in Greene’s plays are descendants of two ancient traditions that became intermingled during the Middle Ages
Places to Hear the Play: The Performance of the Corpus Christi Play at York
At the beginning of the tradition, the pageants were linked to the religious procession on Corpus Christi Day. In the city og York this procession was organised by the Corpus Christi Guild as a separate event from the celebration of the minister.
The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages. Medievalism in the Study of European Drama and Theatre History
If we are going to acknowledge the afterlife of medieval genres, subject matters, motifs and techniques, three methods of research are preferable: 1. looking for simple continuity, 2. taking into account residual afterlife of medieval items in popular culture including folklore, and 3. recognizing the phenomena of the renewal of medieval genres in later ages.
“Of all creatures women be best, / Cuius contrarium verum est:” Gendered Power in Selected Late Medieval and Early Modern Texts
While conjugal love was encouraged by the medieval Church, chastising women by their husbands was commonly practised in the late medieval and early modern periods.
Female Body as Geosomatic Apotrope in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Middleton
As a geographic trope transposed to literary discourse, discovery remains closely linked to the desire for possession. Postcolonial criticism has sought to deconstruct the feminized and sexualized discourses of geographic places and spaces as objects of desire, invasion, and annexation.
The Use of the Rhetorical Exordium in Middle English Drama
In this paper I wish to single out one group of Middle English writings, the mediaeval drama, to examine more closely the interesting applications of the doctrine as exhibited in the “banns” of the miracle plays and of certain moralities, and in the traditional prologues, but es pecially in the more “organic” solutions arrived at by the authors of Man kind and Everyman.
Gender and Violence in the Northern French Farce
I will briefly examine here the identity of farce’s violent characters and their victims, as well as the deviant behaviors punished by comically violent means, ending with a brief discussion of the social conditions which, in my opinion, may have caused the farce’s target audience to enjoy watching the aggressive correction of certain types of antisocial behavior in the century following the Hundred Years’ War.
Medieval Mystery Plays: Cain and Abel
Medieval mystery plays were cycles of plays, covering salvation history from the Creation to the Last Judgment, which were performed in England during the late Middle Ages.
Craftsmanship of the Digby Mary Magdalene play
The Digby Mary Magdalene is contained in the Digby MS. 133 of the Bodlein Library. Included in the Manuscript are three other plays, Killing of the Children, The Conversion of St Paul, and a portion of Wisdom.
A historiographical and artistic survey of confraternities from the later Middle Ages to the early Renaissance
Overall, the analysis will allow for a closer examination of not just the culture of a particular confraternity, but also the cultural values, ideals, and practices of an entire community in one period of time. Furthermore, the examination of confraternal artwork will prove important, as it will demonstrate the unique power of confraternities.
A Reassessment of the Feast of Fools: A Rough and Holy Liturgy
A younger contemporary of Richard of St.-Victor, Jean Beleth (fl. 1160), acknowledged the popular name of the feast: “The feast of the subdeacons, which we call ‘of fools’, by some is executed on the Circumcision, but by others on Epiphany or its octave.’